Premier Daniel Andrews said that will remain the plan for the next two weeks, but offered some hope for the regions if Melbourne does not have the virus under control later in the month.

"If Melbourne is more stubborn than we had thought, we will give very detailed consideration to regional Victoria perhaps taking some further smaller steps so we can continue to have activity and jobs and that sense of recovery in regional Victoria," he told regional media on Thursday.

"We won't have them held back by some of the challenges we've faced in Melbourne.

"But that's not for today and it's not even for next week - that is something that will be under constant review."

Mr Andrews said it was not ideal for metropolitan and regional restrictions to be out of sync, but could be justified if it meant more economic activity in the regions.

"We're in that very difficult zone where there's lots of thinking going into what happens in a couple of weeks time, but we can't give people answers to those very legitimate questions because we want to see all the data that will come in over the next fortnight just to be sure," he said.

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He also addressed what he acknowledged was an "annoying" need to wear masks, saying it would continue for a while.

"I grew up in country Victoria, not far from the border. It gets pretty hot, very dry. I know it will be challenging," Mr Andrews said.

"As soon as masks are no longer serving a purpose, once the risk is lower, then we won't hesitate to make that change."

Face shields, rather than masks, are still being worn regularly in the North East, but people have been warned that the grace period on those expire this weekend and they will then risk a fine.

"It doesn't offer the level of protection for you or for others and Victoria Police will begin enforcing that," Mr Andrews said.

He also said it was "highly unlikely" the ban on Melburnians travelling to regional areas would end before AFL grand final day on October 24.

Department of Health and Human Services head of testing Jeroen Weimar also provided an update yesterday, saying "we'll take the point" that people in areas like Wodonga had been frustrated during the pandemic by the department providing little information about individual cases.

He committed to work on giving communities as much information as possible if there are new cases.

"As the cases become far fewer, it also becomes more important that we understand where people are, what their travel patterns have been, where they live and how we support people around them," he said.

Sewage testing for traces of coronavirus began this week in Wodonga, Wangaratta and Benalla, which Mr Weimar described as a "groundbreaking piece of work".

"We are using that as another way to detecting what's happened with virus spread across the state," he said.

"We can see a gradual, slow drop in the number of people coming forward for testing across most of our regional communities and we understand that ... The sewage testing for us is a really important way of doing some really passive surveillance."

He also said while there was "good collaboration with the NSW Health team", he did not have any knowledge when the state border would be reopened.